Two longtime helpers man refreshment brigade

By Joe HughesUNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

April 30, 2006

Frank Jonasson's love of firefighting began during his childhood in McMinnville, Ore., where he lived down the block from a fire station and sneaked rides on the rigs as they raced to smoke and flames.

Jerry Elmer became hooked after a son took an interest in firefighting as an explorer scout and went on to become a federal firefighter.

HOWARD LIPIN / Union-Tribune

Frank Jonasson, a retired SDSU administrator, sat behind the wheel of a mobile canteen. Jonasson is a member of the Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company, a nonprofit group that operates the San Diego Firehouse Museum in Little Italy.

Frank and Jerry have never fought fires for a living.

They did the next best thing. They volunteered, making sure firefighters have food and drinks to keep them going on the front lines.

Frank, 68, a retired San Diego State University administrator, has volunteered for 35 years.

Jerry, 60, a native San Diegan who suffered a disabling back injury in the Marine Corps and turned to the mechanical trades, has volunteered close to 25 years.

They roll out a mobile canteen to emergencies sometimes in the dead of night to perform a service firefighters consider essential to their mission.

Dehydration is a real danger, so Frank and Jerry cart bottled water and more bottled water, along with fresh brewed coffee, tea, energy snacks and other goodies.

“They are lifesavers, hands down,” said San Diego Fire-Rescue Department Capt. Kevin McWalters. “What they do keeps firefighters in the game.”

The canteen is summoned on big fires or other major disasters, and is maintained and staffed by the Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company, a nonprofit, volunteer organization named after San Diego's first volunteer fire company in 1870.

The organization has about 50 volunteers who operate the San Diego Firehouse Museum in Little Italy at Colombia and Cedar Streets – conducting tours and upkeeping museum fire rigs and equipment – and occasionally sub for Frank and Jerry on the canteen.

Always on call

Frank and Jerry, who over the years have become good friends, have city-issued pagers. They keep the pagers with them at all times, even sleep with them on their bed stands.

The calls always seem to come in early morning.

“We try to be as cheerful as we can be,” said Jerry, who lives in Lemon Grove. “Sometimes at 3:30 a.m., that's hard to do.”

Once they get the page, one of the them fetches the canteen stored at Station No. 1 in downtown San Diego and drives to the fire scene; the other goes directly from his home. They have to be at the fire within an hour of being paged.

“As soon as I get in the canteen, I flip the switch to start coffee brewing,” said Frank, who lives in east San Diego. “That way, it's ready when we arrive.”

The water, Gatorade and other beverages are kept cold in refrigeration units installed in the canteen, and plugged into outlets at Station No. 1. The city pays for the provisions.

Frank and Jerry park the canteen as close to the fire perimeter as safely possible, setting up where medical caregivers are stationed to test firefighters for vital signs on their breaks.

There have been times they found themselves too close to fast-moving fires and had to scoot in a hurry. But neither has ever been injured.

Once in a safe zone, the canteen opens for business with Frank and Jerry serving water and more to firefighters returning from the front lines, much like the familiar food wagons at construction and other sites.

If the canteen has not arrived, Frank or Jerry – whoever is heading directly to a fire from home – may stop at a store to pick up water and snacks and start serving the firefighters right away.

Longtime helpers

Even before Frank was involved in the canteen service, he was doing his part.

He remembered while still working at San Diego State, in 1971, he helped out on the Laguna fire, which raged for days and kept fire personnel on duty almost nonstop.

“I had some pocket change so I stopped by a McDonald's and bought a dozen milkshakes for the dispatchers working in Balboa Park,” Frank said.

Jerry also has done his share.

Volunteering at the firehouse museum, he once used his skills as a mechanic to repair an old, cherished rig that nobody else seemed able to get running.

When he can, Jerry's younger son, who is an avid photographer, accompanies his dad on the canteen runs, helping out and snapping pictures.

Over the years, Frank and Jerry have responded to all the big fires, including the Cedar fire in 2003, when they helped for two-plus days, catching sleep once in a while on the floor of a Kearny Mesa fire station.

The calls can be few and far between or in bunches.

From Aug. 18 to Sept. 19, the canteen rolled eight times, including to fires downtown at the Civic Theatre and a hotel and a brush fire in Rancho Peñasquitos.

“We have an average of about 30 canteen responses a year,” said Frank, who craves the action and has no plan to stop.

He remembers one stretch in June 1981 when the canteen was in service for more than three days, at the Rancho Bernardo-Tierrasanta-Santee Lakes brush fires.

One of the longer incidents, before the Cedar fire, lasted 25 hours at the Balboa Park Aerospace Museum on Feb. 22, 1978.

Before Frank and Jerry retired, they had to balance volunteering with paid work.

Frank, who was associate director of school relations and student recruitment for SDSU, said there were times during the day when he couldn't make canteen runs. And there were times family duties conflicted. Other volunteers, including their sons, would fill the void.

Three canteens have been used over the years; the latest is 24 years old and is showing its age. An old paramedic unit from the Fire Department will take its place once volunteers from the Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company raise money to outfit it.